


Natural

by starlight_firelight



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Arson, Body Horror, Cannibalism, Claustrophobia, Computer Viruses, Dissociation, Eventual Happy Ending, F/F, F/M, Gen, Horror, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Insomnia, M/M, Meta, Nightmares, Poetry, Psychological Horror, Separation Anxiety, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-24
Updated: 2018-11-03
Packaged: 2019-07-01 22:32:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 14,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15783453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlight_firelight/pseuds/starlight_firelight
Summary: Time passes, the world Glitches, and we move in circles.or;Falling down is easier than getting up, especially for those who never really fell down—just sat down and never got up.(updated summary)





	1. Eat Me

**Author's Note:**

> I am not the Mcelroys, nor am I Mark Danielewski, hence I do not own any of the characters in this work.
> 
>  
> 
> this was originally intended to stay on the metaphorical house of leaves plot road (?? idk how to word??) but it's expanded into a sort of techno/astrophysics based sci-fi AU. (You don't need to have read house of leaves to read this.)  
> updates will come relatively frequently but expect irregularities-- I'm a college student with medical problems and without an abundance of time.

Taako still remembers the first person he killed.  
The memory is dim, but emotions like that? Not something you suppress easily.  
Taako still remembers her face as he shoved her off of a cliff, back on his homeworld. He hadn’t meant to, of course, but she was abusing Lup.  
No one touches Lup.  
He didn’t tell anyone. Lup didn’t tell anyone, because, well, why would she?  
So he continued. He forgot, and he buried his past behind him. Far, far behind him.

 

In another world, a hundred years later, he killed forty people in glamour springs. Not to say that that was his second blunder that ended with death. A hundred dead civilizations will harden your heart. But forty people in a day is a lot to cope with.  
He blamed himself. For a month or so, he sulked in peace.

But then came the nightmares.  
They were always the same, but they felt just as terrifying every time.  
He was in a dark hallway that spanned on for about thirty feet, opening into a place that was entirely devoid of light, with no visible walls. There was a monster there he couldn’t see, but every night it found him, hurt him, killed him, ate him.  
They subsided when he found Magnus and Merle. Or maybe when he found the Umbrastaff. It seemed to help.

The nightmares stopped after the Hunger came, after Lup was free and everyone was happy.  
And it was nice.  
He had Lup, and Barold and Kravitz. They weren’t always there, mind you. When you live with three agents of death, you’re bound to have copious amounts of alone time.

The dreams start again in the weeks Taako spends alone.  
The same nightmare, over, and over. He begins to fear sleep itself, doing anything to avoid it.  
On the hundredth day since the Hunger attacked, and the ninth day since Kravitz, Lup, and Barry left on their missions, he looks in a mirror, and sees a face worse than the Wonderland face. He sees dark, purple-and-brown bags underneath his tired eyes. He has sallow, sunken skin, and his hair has lost its sheen.  
It hurts.  
He’s so tired.  
But every time he sleeps, the monster dissects him, tearing out his stomach, intestines, liver, heart lungs. He stays alert and in agony while the thing eats him from the inside out, not waking until he’s consumed entirely.

Angus stops by once a week, and he sees Magnus and Merle every thirty days. The time he spends alone in the time Kravitz & company is gone is unbearable.  
On the eleventh day he spends alone, he breaks.  
He walks into the bathroom of their (his and Kravitz’s technically, but Lup and Barry are always there too) apartment, and (unthinkingly, spells would work much better) pulls out a razor and cuts into his arm over and over again, in long, painful lines.  
It’s a strange feeling, pain that you want. Sharp yet sweet. The more painful realization is "no, no, I don’t want to die, please, I don’t want to die."

Taako was lucky that, by harsh yet forgiving coincidence, that day and that time was when Kravitz, Lup, and Barry walked through the door.  
(His body was surrounded by blood, not unlike when The Monster eats him)  
Kravitz screams, his yell turning to heaving sobs.  
Barry just stands there, ashen and pale.  
Lup leaps into action, scooping Taako’s body up in her arms, and running into the living room of their apartment. Barry follows, pulling out his stone of farspeech, and calling Merle.

Taako doesn't wake up at first.  
Merle works on him for hours, using up all of his spell slots.  
When Taako's stable, They let him sleep.

 

Kravitz can't tell what time it is. He's sat there, at the side of the couch, for what feels like days. He feels... spent. drained. He had cried for a long time, until he ran out of tears to shed. He knows that death isn't something terrible, and he knows that even if Taako died, it wouldn't really be the end. Best case scenario, he could probably convince the Raven Queen to let Taako join him, Lup, and Barry. Luckily, though, he didn't have to worry about the consequences of permanent death. It wasn't the fact that Taako could have died that really shook him, it was the manner in which he tried to do it. Suicide wasn't usually a present thing in Kravitz's mind, but the fact that Taako had been miserable enough to try and end his own life? It might be selfish, but it makes Kravitz feel like he's somehow failed at something he was supposed to do.  
Lup comes into the room and rests a hand on Kravitz's head.  
They stay like that for a while, watching Taako breathe. Merle's covered his arms with herbs and bandages and weird looking beetle talismans.

Lup breaks the silence. "He'll be fine, Bone boy."  
"I know. It just... It feels weird? Like, Taako doesn't act like someone who wants to die, but we leave for more than a week and he just... tries to die." Kravitz slumps slightly lower in his chair.

"Yeah. You want to come into the kitchen and help me make focaccia?" Lup says, gesturing towards the hallway that leads to the kitchen.  
"yeah."


	2. Love Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit to the McElroys, Mark Z Danielewski, and Amanda Lovelace

_In your head (in your head)  
They are crying  
In your head  
in your head  
Zombie, zombie, zombie  
what’s in your head?  
In your head  
Zombie, zombie_

 

The apartment is usually a sunny place. The walls are a yellowish-white, and the carpet is a garish, kind of ugly orange. There are three huge windows in the kitchen, letting the sunlight through. It’s not a big apartment, with only one bedroom, one bathroom, a living room, and a kitchen.  
Usually, Lup and Taako would be singing or yelling, while Barry studies in a corner and Kravitz reads a novel.  
Angus drops by now and then, both for the company and the magic lessons he no longer needs. Taako was trying to teach him Wish, no matter how many times Angus told him that _no, he was only tenth level._ It’s summer break for everyone, so Angus comes by every Saturday.  
Things are darker now. It’s been three days since The Incident, what they decided to call it, and Taako has yet to wake up. Even though it’s mid-summer and the world is warm and bright, the atmosphere in the apartment is glum.

Lup is quiet, reserved. She spends hours in the kitchen, stress baking. She's done this so much that every available surface in the kitchen is covered in baked goods.  
Barry has buried himself even deeper into his studying, having set up a lab that takes over half of the bedroom.  
Kravitz spends all his waking hours in the living room, with Taako.  
Taako's still displaying signs of life, but he looks worse every day.  
What will Kravitz even say to him when he wakes up?  
~~If he wakes up~~

Taako wakes on the fifth day after The Incident.  
He screams.  
Kravitz is there almost immediately, telling him _“it’s okay, you’re alive, everything is okay”  
_ He screams.  
Lup and Barry are there now, too. Lup hugs him, pats his back kisses his forehead.  
He screams, but now he sobs, too.  
Barry stands to the side, flipping through his spellbook.  
Taako screams.  
They call Angus, Merle, and Magnus.  
Taako scream-weeps, his voice hoarse, tears streaming in little rivers down his cheeks. He fumbles to hug Lup, staining her T-shirt with his tears.  
Angus shows up. He frets, and flutters around Taako, offering all sorts of medicines.  
Taako cries.  
Kravitz joins Lup and Taako on the couch, Barry sits on the floor, and Angus stands to the side, twitching anxiously.  
Merle and Magnus don’t show up.  
Taako cries for what feels like hours, gripping onto Lup like she’s his lifeline.

When he finally calms down, the room is drenched in silence. Taako lets go of Lup, and shifts so he’s leaning his weight against Kravitz.  
“Sorry ‘bout that,” He says, looking at Lup.  
She looks down at her shirt, properly soiled with tears and mucus. “Oh, no. That’s fine. What’s got you so down, though, Koko?”  
“Bit of a bad dream, I guess. Nothing’ to worry about, yeah?” He picks at the bandages Lup had wrapped around his left arm this morning.  
“You tried to fucking kill yourself, Koko. You don’t have to tell me, but I’d appreciate it,” Lup says, shifting of the couch to join Barry on the ground.  
Taako squishes even closer to Kravitz, folding his legs up underneath him. He shoots a worried glance at Angus and tugs at his hair.  
Kravitz thinks he looks better already, his cheeks regaining some of their pink, his long blond hair regaining just a bit of its luster. He’s wearing one of Lup’s oversized T-shirts (that says flame on, of course) and a pair of shorts, and he’s alive and he’s wonderful and beautiful.

“I…uh, I get nightmares. When I’m alone.” Taako says, fiddling with his hair some more. “I don’t fucking…like, feel comfortable talking about them now? But… um, let’s just say they got, like, real bad n’ ch’boy thought he could cop out.” He sighs, tired, scared, and uncomfortable with the thought of freely sharing his feelings.  
Taako’s not a ‘feelings’ sort of guy. Yes, he feels fear and joy and love, but he’s not overly partial to talking about them. Yes, he loves Kravitz, but is he's going to scream that to all of Neverwinter? No. Yes, he dreams about eaten alive every night he spends asleep and alone, but he doesn’t enjoy going into any sort of detail on the matter.  
This nightmare was worse.  
In this nightmare, he got away.  
In this nightmare, he ran.  
He knew what was coming, and he ran.  
He came across a wall (by running into it) then, by scooting against said wall, he found a hallway, and another hallway, turning right, then left, then straight, repeat. Each hallway was longer than the last.  
When the monster found him, he could practically smell escape.  
Have you ever been slowly taken apart bit by bit while listening to the sweet music of your own screams and sobs? If not, it’s hard to describe.  
Imagine something with long, sharp claws slicing your abdomen open, taking out your organs one by one. (Stomach, liver, bladder intestines, kidneys.) Now imagine that thing tears your flesh from your bones, slowly ripping it off like taffy off of a frozen lamppost. The monster crunches down on your bones, starting with your fingers and toes, then your radius and ulna bones, your tibias and your fibulas. Then it eats your femurs and humeri, your ribcage, your heart, your skull, your lungs. Every little bit of you.  
It took longer than usual.  
It hurt more.  
It hurt so much.  
His arm hurts like a bitch. He kind of regrets trying to end his life, if only due to his worse-than-normal nightmare, (which felt a bit like a punishment for trying to kill himself) and how absolutely depressed everyone looks.  
Kravitz probably blames himself.  
Taako’ll tell him about the nightmares, make sure to pound it into his head that it was most certainly not his fault in any way.  
He’ll tell Lup, too. Probably at the same time, because talking about that takes a lot of energy out of him.  
But not now, when his body aches with exhaustion and pain, not with little Agnes (Angus? Mango?) standing in the corner of the room like Taako’s his dying grandfather. Not with Barold sitting there rifling through his spellbook, probably trying to find Calm Emotions or something of the like.  
“Should I go, sir? Or…” Angus motions to the door.  
“Nah, homie. It’s cool.” Taako says.  
~~Nothing’s cool.  
Nothing’s okay~~

_Everyone  
Urges me to  
Hold on to  
My dreams  
To pass the  
Time,_

_But  
What happens  
When your dreams  
Are nightmares  
Stuck on  
Repeatrepeatrepeat?_

_-please wake me up_

 

Angus sees a lot of things. His ability to see things is what got him into the Bureau of Balance, it’s what got him into school, and it’s what made him friends with these chucklefucks.  
So, naturally, he sees Taako’s fear. He can tell that something’s wrong, even before The Incident.  
Something’s very wrong. But no matter how much he sees on the surface, he can’t pick apart the root of the problem. Taako’s not going to tell him what’s wrong, at least not yet. But hey, he’s the world’s greatest detective. He can figure out most of anything.  
And then he gets a call. From Barry Bluejeans. Barry’s not the calling type.

Angus McDonald sees Taako for what he is. He’s not a good elf, but he tries.

Angus McDonald sees a lot of things.

But he didn’t see anything about this.

~~~~

He should have known.

He’s the world’s greatest detective.

~~~~

He should have seen this coming

Useless

Unloved

Unneeded

Unhelpful

Angus McDonald, the world’s worst detective. 

He’s okay, and Taako’s alive.  
~~He’s never seen anyone scream that much.  
He’s not really a child anymore, but sometimes he feels so very helpless, so very young.~~

 

Lup doesn’t know what to do, and it scares her. She knows Taako. She’s spent hundreds of years at his side, she knows every facet of his person. She knows what he likes to eat, she knows he hates being alone, but he’s too proud to admit that. She knows he’s scared, and it scares her, because she doesn’t know of what.  
Lup never thought Taako was invincible. He was never a protector, he always like to sit in the back and read his ‘nerdy wizard books’. Lup was the protector, the scavenger, the evocationist.  
How can she hope to protect him from his own mind?  
She works with Barry and Kravitz and good ol’ RQ. She can’t spend every moment of her life with Taako anymore.  
She remembers the look on his face when he told her about Wonderland. _They didn’t share a face anymore, he said. He’s sorry, he said._  
He still keeps it charmed, but no matter what he looks like, he’s Lup’s little brother (by seven minutes)  
And she loves him.  
Barry’s amazing and beautiful, and she loves him too, but nothing can ever compare to how much she cares about Taako.  
Lup hates it when he cries. It stabs her in the heart to see him upset. She wants to end the life of whoever makes him cry, but how can she kill his nightmares? She’s an evocationist, not an enchantress.  
She’s strong, but she’s scared.

 

Barry Bluejeans isn’t good with people.  
He’s timid, and talking is not his strongest skill.  
He feels useless when they find Taako in the bathroom.  
He feels useless when Taako screams and cries.  
He doesn’t even have fucking Calm Emotions in his spellbook. In fact, he didn’t have any enchantment spells. Why did he only have necromancy spells? Ah, yes. He’s a stupid goddamned lich and a necromancer. What do you do with that, eh?  
Barry Bluejeans doesn’t like himself. He doesn’t understand why Lup loves him, why Taako and Kravitz accept him. He sees himself as a useless piece of shit, to be frank.  
Barry Bluejeans can’t remember the last time he had a dream, much less a nightmare.  
Lup looks like she’s about to cry. He scoots over to her and puts an arm around her shoulder.  
She smiles at him, and his heart swells. He smiles back.  
Taako clears his throat. “Nasty, Lup.”  
She grins at him. “Oh yeah, mister ‘literally sitting on the lap of your fucking boyfriend?’”  
Taako grumbles at that. Kravitz chuckles.

 

Kravitz is just as scared as Lup, but in a different way.  
He’s scared that he’s failing at some unspoken responsibility.  
He knows it’s probably not true, but a little voice in the back of his head keeps telling him it’s his fault that Taako’s this unhappy.  
Taako is amazing.  
Kravitz was cold before Taako.  
He didn’t feel much, just carried on for the upside of eight hundred years, until he met the elf.  
When Taako came into his life, it was like seeing the sunlight for the first time. He shines, no matter how tired, no matter how sick, no matter what.  
Lup and Barry’s souls are black. So is Kravitz’s, and anyone who works under the Raven Queen.  
Angus’s is light blue, with just a bit of silver.  
But Taako’s soul?  
Taako’s soul is intricate and golden, with just a bit of silver, and just a bit of blue. (The marks of Istus and Oghma) it’s the brightest thing in Kravitz’s life.

On the sixth day after The Incident, the atmosphere is so much lighter.  
Taako and Lup are singing some obnoxious song from a children’s movie about elevators, of all things.  
Kravitz is sitting on the couch, eating what looks like pie.  
Barry is dissolving organs in acid ‘for science’  
Angus is sleeping on the floor in the living room, having decided to stay in the apartment, upping the body count to five in an apartment meant for one or two people.

Taako has yet to tell any of them about his nightmares, but he will. Give it time, and he’ll gather the courage.  
Much of any heart-felt conversation is hard for Taako to engage in. Lup’s always been better at that sort of thing, even though it took her fifty fucking years to get together with Barry.

On the seventh day after the incident, He sleeps, and he dreams.  
The nightmares don’t stop.  
The maze shifts  
The monster finds him, eats him  
He wakes up.  
Some of them he can’t remember, but they’re there. They tell him he screams louder every night.  
He’s fucking sick of it.  
He’s done.  
~~He’s losing his mind.  
~~ He stops sleeping again. Kravitz and Lup talk in hushed voices in the middle of the night. Barry is glued to Lup’s side. He hears Angus cry himself to sleep every night.

_There were  
Some secrets_

__

__

That threatened  
To chip away

At my  
Porcelain pieces

But felt necessary  
To keep myself

 _Whole_

 

On the sixteenth night after The Incident, Taako comes into the kitchen. Angus is curled up in a corner, sobs wracking his small-ish body.  
“Ango…?”  
Angus scrambles to his feet and wipes his eyes. “Oh, um… Hello, sir.”  
“Angus, what the fuck?” Taako crouches down and spreads his arms for a hug. (Albeit reluctantly)  
“That’s kind of out of character for you, sir,” Angus says, staying in his corner.  
“Don’t be so fucking meta, Mango.”  
“Sorry, sir,” He sniffles, and accepts the hug. His sniffles develop into full-bodied sobs.  
“What’s got you down, homie?” Taako asks, patting Angus’s back in an attempt to comfort him.  
”I…well, you probably don’t want to know that, sir,” he says in between sobs.  
“It’s not gonna fucking kill me, Agnes”  
Angus stops crying, though his voice still wavers. “See, sir, that’s just the thing. I, um, I’m worried about you. You don’t sleep, you don’t eat, and you worry me, sir. Lup, Barry and Kravitz talk about your nightmares, sir,” He inhales shakily “I think that you need help. I could arrange a meeting with an acquaintance of mine who I believe could be of assistance?”  
Taako sighs. “That sounds nice, Mango, but ch’boy doesn’t need any fucking help, m’kay?”  
Angus chuckles a little, his sobs having stopped a minute ago. “At least eat something, sir.”  
“Sure, little man. I was just getting an apple,” Taako lets go of Angus, in favour of grabbing an apple from the fruit bowl.  
He doesn’t eat it.  
His head hurts.  
His back hurts, his arms hurt, his eyes hurt  
~~Eat something  
~~ He doesn’t have the energy  
~~Fight it  
~~ He can’t  
~~Get some sleep  
~~ He wants too  
~~Just die already  
~~ He can’t.  
He misses Kravitz.  
He leaves the kitchen ~~without saying goodbye to Angus  
~~ He walks into the bedroom. Kravitz is in there, alone with the sheets, and Barry’s numerous bottles of stinking chemicals.  
~~Kravitz is lovely. Taako doesn’t deserve him.  
~~ Taako climbs into the bed after tripping over a couple of Barry’s experiments.  
“Krav?” he whispers.  
There’s hope there.  
~~Fear, too.  
~~ Kravitz is the most beautiful person Taako’s ever seen. He’s got a cold, soft kind of beauty that’s oh-so-rare. He’s all braids and dark skin and hazel eyes and sweet personality.  
He’s cold.  
But Taako’s warm, so that’s okay.  
Kravitz tries so hard.  
So very hard.

_Somehow,  
My soul  
Knew  
Your soul  
Before we  
Ever had the  
Chance to meet  
-it was like coming home after a long, long day_

 

“Krav?” he whispers again.  
“Hmm?” Kravitz shifts, opening one eye.  
“Wake up.”  
“What is it, love?”  
“I’m gonna get Lup ‘n tell y’all about my dreams.”  
~~They won’t care  
Keep it to yourself  
~~ Kravitz opens both eyes, raises an eyebrow. “Really?”  
“Yup.” Taako hauls himself off of the bed.  
~~It hurts  
Sleep  
Eat  
L i v e  
~~ “Kay. that’s great, Taako.” Kravitz sits up, yawning.  
He smiles at Taako, soft and full of love.  
Taako’s heart flutters.  
So beautiful.  
He shoots Krav a thumbs up and a smile, and moves from the bedroom into the hallway.

~~~~

~~The hallway is dark  
Like the hallway in the nightmare  
~~ Lup’s sleeping on the couch, vaguely on top of Barry. Taako pokes her on the forehead.  
“Lulu, get up. Lup.”  
“What the fuck.” She mutters, swatting his hand away.  
Taako grabs her hand, and tries to pull her off of Barry and the couch.  
~~He’s weak  
~~ “c’mon, Lup. Imma tell you ‘n Krav ‘bout my nightmares.”  
Lup grumbles something incoherent.  
“Please?” Taako asks. (He does not “plead”, he has some fucking dignity left)  
“Fine.” She rolls off of the couch. Barry is still, miraculously, asleep.  
Lup stands up, rubbing sleep from her eyes. Her hair is huge and somewhat curly, healthy and platinum blonde, brighter that Taako’s hair. She’s wearing a shirt that just says ‘fuck’ and black leggings.  
She’s got his face.  
Or rather, he’s got her face. She came out first. Come out. He chuckles to himself.  
Their faces are long, light brown with a sprinkling of darker freckles, full lips, and golden eyes. Their ears are long and pointed, somewhat different from faerun’s elves’ smaller hobbit-like ears.  
Wonderland took their face away from him, but he’s a fucking wizard, so he just magic’s himself up his old face every day. (He’s rewritten Disguise Self to last for twenty-four hours)  
They walk into the kitchen.  
Angus is still there. He fell asleep on the floor. Lup picks him up and carries him back into the living room with Barry.  
Kravitz walks in a minute later, looking just as tired and frazzled as Lup and Taako.  
They sit down at the table.  
Taako takes a bite of the apple.  
It’s good.  
~~Drop it  
~~ No.  
Lup and Kravitz exchange a nervous glance.  
~~They don’t care  
Don’t waste your breath  
~~ No.

~~~~

~~Can nobody hear me?  
I’ve got a lot that’s on my mind.~~

Taako collects his thoughts and speaks. Fast and tense, but he speaks.  
“I have… well, you fucking know I have nightmares. But they, um. Goddamnit I’m bad at this shit. Um, I’m in a like, dark space. A big, dark room, with walls and stuff.” Lup tenses at the mention of dark, enclosed spaces ”there’s a monster, at least I think it’s a monster- that, fuck, eats me. But that doesn’t happen at first, now. There’s…before the monster, there’s like, a bunch of shifting hallways. And all of this, just, it’s really dark and I can hear the ~~Minotaur~~ monster, and I can, like, hear the walls changing, shifting? If that makes sense. And every time, I can like…smell? The exit. Like, it’s fucking right there and-shit- then the motherfucking monster catches me, and well… he eats me alive? It’s no fucking fun, my dudes. But um, yeah. I think that’s it.”  
Silence.  
~~They don’t care  
~~ “Fuck, koko. That’s… that’s horrible,” Lup says, her face taught.  
“Yeah. And this is every time you sleep now?” Kravitz asks, concern seeping into his voice.  
“Yup,”  
“I’m…” Kravis voice cracks “I’m so sorry, Taako. I-”  
“Shh,” Taako breathes, looking at Lup.  
She’s crying.  
Lulu doesn’t cry.  
~~She hates you  
~~ No she doesn’t.  
Fuck you.

 

Lup doesn’t really know why she’s crying.  
It’s just… her brother. He’s hurting, so much.  
She doesn’t know how to protect him.  
She doesn’t know how to help him  
She can’t believe he’s in so much pain.  
She can’t kill his head.  
She feels weak  
Fuck this.  
Taako’s hurting.  
And she’s going to make it stop.  
She’s gonna fucking kill whatever’s hurting him.  
No one hurts her Taako.

 

_Oh,  
I bet  
You regret  
Making  
An enemy  
Out of  
Me_

_-One back, two knives_

 

Kravitz still blames himself.  
Maybe if he’s woken Taako up more often.  
Maybe if he hadn’t left in the first place  
Taako looks fragile  
Porcelain  
~~Don’t blame yourself  
~~ Kravitz reaches out, brushes Taako’s hair (light gold, bright, like his soul) from his face.  
Taako smiles at him.  
Like the fucking sun.  
“Don’t blame yourself, Krav,” Taako says.  
~~He knows you to well.  
~~ “Sorry,” Kravitz replies.  
“Don’t be, homie. Whatever motherfucker’s giving me these dreams... I refuse to believe I’m just insane. Well, I’m gonna end it, alright?”  
“Alright,” he kisses Taako, quick and chaste.  
He’s great  
Taako’s the motherfucking sun.  
Lup makes retching sounds in the background.  
Taako laughs.

_His smile makes my bones ache_

__

__

_-a pain I welcome._

 

The lights are dim.  
The room is dark.  
But the atmosphere is finally happy.

Taako eats the rest of the apple.  
He’s too thin, too tired, but he’s still alive, still beautiful. His soul might be a bit dimmer than usual, but it still shines like the sun.

Kravitz does not blame himself.  
And whatever’s terrorizing Taako? He’ll kill it, lock it up in the stockade, and never let it out.  
He’s sure lup'll help him.  
They can kill the demons Taako can’t, because he kills theirs.

On the seventeenth day after the incident, Angus wakes up in the living room, near Barry Bluejeans. Taako and Lup are singing, and the sun is filtering through the curtains, lighting up the horrible orange carpets of the apartment.  
~~He has to go back to school in thirty-seven days~~

He sees Taako eat a bowl of cereal.  
Lup and Kravitz and Taako, they’re all happy.  
Angus can help them stay that way.  
He’s Angus McDonald, the world’s greatest detective, and he can solve this fucking mystery.

_’Tis a grove-circled dwelling  
Set close to a hill,  
Where the branches are telling  
Strange legends of ill;  
Over timbers so old  
That they breathe of the dead,  
Crawl the vines, green and cold,  
By strange nourishment fed;  
And no man knows the juices they suck from the depths of their dank slimy bed._

_In the gardens are growing  
Tall blossoms and fair,  
Each pallid bloom throwing  
Perfume on the air;  
But the afternoon sun  
With its shining red rays  
Makes the picture loom dun  
On the curious gaze,  
And above the sween scent of the the blossoms rise odours of numberless days._

_The rank grasses are waving  
On terrace and lawn,  
Dim memories sav’ring  
Of things that have gone;  
The stones of the walks  
Are encrusted and wet,  
And a strange spirit stalks  
When the red sun has set,  
And the soul of the watcher is fill’d with faint pictures he fain would forget._

_It was in the hot Junetime  
I stood by that scene,  
When the gold rays of noontime  
Beat bright on the green.  
But I shiver’d with cold,  
Groping feebly for light,  
As a picture unroll’d—  
And my age-spanning sight  
Saw the time I had been there before flash like fulgury out of the night._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boy do I fucking hate orange carpets  
> credit to Amanda Lovelace, _the princess saves herself in this one_ and H.P Lovecraft's, _The house_ for the poetry.


	3. Burn Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> credit to the Mcelroys, Mark Z Danielewski, Amanda Lovelace, Rupi Kaur, and Tom Stoppard

_We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered._

The door appears on the twentieth day since the incident. It’s just… there. They go to sleep at night and when they wake up, there’s a fucking entrance to a long, dark hallway that defies all kinds of physics and relativity. The entrance is about five and a half feet tall, positioned in the hallway as if it had always been, just another door within many. The magic hallway itself is a thirty-foot long hellhole, with ashy black walls. Barry does some fantasy carbon dating on it, and turns out it’s billions of years old. (Six billion or so. When carbon dating that far back, it’s almost impossible to get a more accurate estimate.) Faerun wasn’t even that old.  
They stick together like glue after that, the five of them. They’re always crammed into one room, because no one wants to be alone, and no one wants to lose anyone.  
Taako doesn’t dream that night.  
It brings him no comfort.  
It feels like the nightmares are bleeding into and replacing his real life, which is not cool.

When Taako and Lup were traveling around their homeworld, he didn’t eat a lot, he didn’t sleep a lot.  
The habits stayed.  
He’s dropped twenty pounds in two weeks.  
He’s gaunt, with sunken cheeks, dull eyes, and pale skin.

 

__Sticks and stones__  
_Never broke_  
_My bones_  
_But words_  
_made me_  
_starve myself_  
_until_  
_you could see_  
_all of them_  
_-skin & bone_

Kravitz urges him too eat.  
Kravitz holds him every night like a breeze might  
B l o w h i m a w a y  
Lup makes him cook. That used to help.  
Why doesn’t it help anymore?  
He sleeps more now.  
Not that it helps  
The magic hallway is still there.  
How can he even begin to function with it there?

 

He tries to eat something.  
He throws it up in the toilet.  
Once you’ve started, you can’t go back  
Addiction, in its own sad sense.  
He half expects the monster to come into the apartment, if only to eat him  
One  
Last  
Time  
Maybe this is all a dream.  
Maybe he’ll wake up in Kravitz's arms, safe, happy and healthy.  
It seems the fuck not.

 

He develops coping mechanisms.  
He picks at his scabs, bites his fingernails, tears at his hair, cries into Kravitz or Lup’s shoulder.  
All things that Taako doesn’t do. Not really his fucking brand, if you catch my drift.  
Nothing really helps, anyway.

The hallway’s still there.

 

_Little solace comes_  
_to those who grieve_  
_when thoughts keep drifting_  
_as walls keep shifting_  
_and this great blue world of ours_  
_seems a house of leaves_

_Moments before the wind._

 

He’s falling apart.  
Crumbling.

Lup tries to talk to him.  
He pushes her away.  
~~Why?~~  
Stop it  
She loves you  
They all do  
So?  
She cries more now.  
They all do.  
Especially little Angus  
He cries so much  
His eyes are always red.  
~~Help him~~  
You love him  
Console him

Taako doesn’t have the energy.

Kravitz tries to stay strong.  
He still cries when he thinks you’re asleep.  
The Raven Queen gives Kravitz, Lup, and barry a vacation of sorts to deal with the magic hallway.

Everything comes back to the fucking hallway.  
Taako hates that fucking hallway.  
But not as much as he hates himself for being this  
Weak.  
Helpless  
Burden  
Useless  
He’s not pretty anymore.  
He’s never been a good person.  
He drags everyone down with him.  
He’s got nothing going for him.  
He’s worthless.  
Better off dead.

_The way you speak of yourself_  
_the way you degrade yourself_  
_into smallness_  
_is abuse_

_-self-harm_

On the twenty-seventh day after the incident, Taako goes into the magic hallway

He left a fucking note

“back soon”  
Yeah right  
Lup was supposed to protect him,  
Tear up the thorns that stand in his path and  
burn  
them  
To  
The  
Ground

She should have gone with Taako  
Kravitz wants to follow him in.  
Nope  
Lup wants to follow him in.  
No  
It doesn’t let them in.  
The entryway closes.  
They sit outside that door, the four of them.  
Lup, Barry, Kravitz, Angus.  
The twin, the lover, the grim reaper, and the boy detective.  
They wait.  
Hours  
Years  
~~Centuries  
Too long.~~

 

The hallway is dark and long, stretching out for a good thirty feet.  
~~Nightmare~~  
Taako casts Light  
He walks down to the end, turning left at the crossroads.  
~~He’s never right~~  
He hears the familiar growl from his dreams.  
He hears screams too, this time.  
Maybe they’re the screams of a lonely traveler lost in the labyrinth.  
~~he can’t remember when he started calling it the labyrinth. Maybe he always did, maybe he just started.~~  
Who fucking cares.

_The panther paces._  
_Waiting reminds him that clarity is painful_  
_But his pain is unreadable._  
_Obscure, chiaroscuro to their human senses._

_In time they will misread his gait,_  
_His moon mad eyes,_  
_The almost gentle way his tail caresses the bars._

_In time they will mistake him_  
_For something else—_  
_Without history,_  
_Without the shadow of being,_  
_A creature without the penance of living._

_They read only his name._

_They will be unable to perceive_  
_What strangeness_  
_Lies beneath his patience._

_Patience is the darkest side of power._

_He is dark._  
_He is black._  
_He is exquisitely powerful._  
_He has made pain his lover_  
_And hidden her completely._

_Now he will never forget._

_She will give birth to memories_  
_They believe he has been broken of._

_He smells the new rain,_  
_Tastes its change._

_His claw skates along_  
_The cold floor._

_Love curled up and died_  
_On such a floor._

_He blinks._  
_Clarity improves._

_He hears other creatures scream and fade.  
But silence is his._

_He knows._

_In time the gates will open.  
In time his heart will open._

_Then the shadows will bleed  
And the locks will break._

 

Ten lefts later  
Walls shifting  
Crying  
dying

something tugs his (long, ratty) hair,  
pulls him back.  
Into it.

His light spell fades.

It feels humanoid. Clawed hands crawl down Taako’s body.  
Cuts him, just enough to burn.  
Taako screams.  
Tries to curl in on himself.  
Claws hold him back.  
Thrashes, bites, curses, falls limp.  
Time passes.

 

_Taako’s small, and he’s not in Faerun._  
He’s on his homeworld.  
Lup’s somewhere else, finding food.  
They usually stick together, but it’s cold, and business is slow and spread out, so they split up to better steal from rich people.  
There’s a man looming over him, Tall, human, bearded, and mean.  
He’s got those fancy god robes on, so he can’t be bad, right?  
Wrong. 

He remembers that day in flashes. 

He’s pushed against a wall, the bearded man squishing his mouth into Taako’s.  
Why? 

He’s touching Taako in places Lup told him he shouldn’t let anyone touch.  
Why? 

Taako comes to Lup that night, bleeding from places he shouldn’t bleed from.  
Why? 

He cries himself to sleep.  
He never forgives, and he never forgets. 

_____My first kiss:___  
_Tackled_  
_Pinned down_  
_A mouth_  
_Repeating_  
_No no no._  
_After:_  
_Bruises_  
_&_  
_the unmistakable_  
_taste of_  
_blood._  
_-I will never forgive you_

____

He gathers his mind,  
Casts Light again and sees his captor.  
He has patchy brown and pale skin.  
Vitiligo  
Other than that, he looks kinda normal. He’s got frizzy hair pulled up into a bun, and scars for days.  
The light seems to burn him. He lets ho of Taako, running back into the shadows of the labyrinth. 

Taako fucking runs. He sprints, fast as he can.  
The labyrinth expands. The way back is a good deal longer.  
He slows to a walk.  
It hurts.  
His arms, torso, face, legs. 

He sees light.  
He runs faster.  
He smells escape. 

Ten hours, thirty-seven minutes, and six seconds after Taako went into the magic hallway, he comes out  
Running.  
Bleeding  
Dying  
Again  
His clothes, arms, torso, and face are scratched, cut, even flayed in some paces.  
Kill it  
Burn it  
He’s sobbing as he careens into Lup 

_Blood_

_Thorns_

_Pain_

_Murder_

The door closes 

They call Merle again.  
~~Repetition~~

Many spell slots, blood, and tears later, Taako’s okay. Not really, but okay. 

Kravitz is afraid.  
Taako’s curled up in the bed with him.  
They’re both shaking.  
Kravitz just repeats ‘I love you,’ over and over again. 

____What is stronger__  
_Than the human heart_  
_Which shatters over and over_  
_And still lives_  


They shake because they are tired.  
They shake because they are afraid.  
Taako whimpers, and buries himself further into the blankets, further into Kravitz’s heart. 

Lup walks into the bedroom to check on Taako from time to time.  
He’s sleeping now,  
Calm and peaceful.  
She makes eye contact with Kravitz. 

_a_  
_world_  
_where all_

__human beings_  
_are taken care of_ _

__shouldn't be called_ _

__a "revolutionary"_  
_way of life_ _

__& yet_  
_it is._ _

__-burn”_ _

Taako won’t say what happened to him in the labyrinth  
That’s not too surprising, but Lup’s still beyond angry. Not at Taako, mind you.  
She’s seething.  
She punches, burns, and kills a tree  
Who cares?  
No one  
No one  
Has any right to hurt him.  
No one has any right to hurt anyone.  
She feels bad about the tree. 

_I had a_  
_Big smile_  
_On my face_  
_As I burned_  
_The bridges_  
_To all the things_  
_I could not_  
_Repair._

___-does the smoke still choke you?__ _

She gets coffee with barry  
She talks to Kravitz  
She consoles Angus  
Jokes with Taako.  
Life goes on  
Even though  
That  
Hallway  
Is always  
There  
Dark  
And  
Frightening 

She gets scared just walking past it.  
The kind of overwhelming scared that fills your skull and  
Pushes  
In  
On  
Your  
Brain. 


	4. Hide Me

Lup’s an arsonist.  
She likes that part of herself.  
She likes watching her enemies burn.  
With every step she takes, fire roars through her, powering her, feeding her helping her. Lup is a lich, in a way but she is also pure, unrestrained fire. She burns like all the world is burning with her.  
She’s also water, poetry, and a whole lot of macaroons.  
But you’ll find that rather than seventy percent water, she’s seventy percent fire.  
Burning thinks is fun  
Fire crackles, shines, destroys.  
(Transmutation doesn’t sound near as fun)  
So she grins, wide and unrestrained, as she stands watching some necromancer burn.  
She laughs when the people who hurt her go up in bright, raging flames.

She doesn’t hurt now because she’s spent all of her ability to hurt.  
She’s tired of being down, of hurting.  
So, fuck it.  
Emotions are a choice at this point. Two hundred and fifty six will harden you to most everything. They’ll sap all the empathy out of you and leave you filled with fire.  
Not to say that fire can’t be empathetic.  
Fire can be Lup’s best friend, her worst enemy. It changes. No to flames are exactly the same.  
Fire doesn’t generally burn at 32 degrees Fahrenheit. Lup fucking hates the cold, but hey, summer’s still raging.  
Fire is angry.  
Fire is that ‘no-good jock that cussed a bunch because they thought it was cool’ that you knew in fantasy middle school.  
Fire is soft.  
Fire is a smile, the warmth of the sun, those happy emotions that bloom in the base of your skull and spread to your fingers and toes, the ones that bring tears to your eyes and make you smile like the whole world’s at your feet.  
Fire is also a chemical reaction caused by rapid oxidation of something.  
Taako spins gold out of straw. Lup just fucking burns the barn down. Taako’s closed off, quiet, and deep in thought.  
Lup’s emotional, loud, and burning.  
If Lup’s fire then Taako’s water.  
Yet somehow they fit together like two pieces from the same puzzle. They are pieces from the same metaphorical puzzle, actually.  
When Lup sets a foot down, the ground burns beneath her.  
When Taako sets a foot down, the ground turns to gold.  
Taako runs away, he’s the ‘flight’ half of fight or flight.  
Lup stands her ground, and burns. She’s the ‘fight’ half of fight of light.  
She burns from the insides. Magic flows from within her. Magic is fire to Lup.  
It flows from her chest to her toes and fingers, to the entire plane, to the planer system, to the entire fucking universe.  
Everything she touches burns.  
Lup burns in everything she does.  
She burns with love  
She burns with hate  
She burns with fear  
She burns with fire.  
She burns the dragons she faces to the ground.  
She burns, but with that fire must come a good amount of control.

So she doesn’t speak up when Taako goes into the labyrinth.  
She wants to burn it all, but she has control.  
When Taako comes out of the labyrinth, she stays quiet.  
After two hundred and fifty years of looking after someone, of the looking after you, you learn every facet of them, you know how to comfort them, anger them, tease them, and love them.

Fir can be gentle. It can warm you when you freeze, cook your food trough your hunger, light your way in the darkest of places.  
Lup is like fire in almost every respect  
Her soul burns sometimes. When she gets angry, it turns fiery red, to rival the shade of blood spilt from her enemies, staining her sheets twelve weeks out of the year.  
Most of the time it’s black, like a tornado, with bits of red and yellow.  
Disturbingly like the Hunger, eh? 

 

Angus McDonald goes back to school on the fifty-fourth day since the incident.  
The apartment feels empty without his kid energy.  
At least, Taako thinks so. He’d never admit how fond he’s actually gotten of the kid.

People are important to Taako.  
When he’s upset, he needs someone there, at his side.  
He doesn’t do a great job coping with loneliness.  
When most people look at him, they probably see him as weak and annoying. Like, the kind of guy who walks into work late holding that fantasy Starbucks cup.  
He tries very hard to not be that person. (Only hipster coffee for ch’boy, even though he does use an unconscionable amount of sugar and milk)  
He looks like he’d be the kind of guy to spill his emotions at the drop of a hat.  
Nope  
He just doesn’t think that it’s anyone’s fucking business to know what he’s feeling.  
That’s Lup’s shit. Taako’s good out here, than you very much.

Taako’s just a little bit afraid of the dark.  
It’s not really something he acknowledges  
Who cares? He can still sleep, given no friendly murder dreams visit him in the night. Given he’s not alone.  
Oh, yeah.  
He still can’t sleep when he’s alone. It’s not even a nightmare thing, it’s just a bit of fucking weakness.  
When you really think about it, emotions sound really fucking stupid. Like, why waste your time, evolution? Emotions are a burden.  
Not to say Taako doesn’t feel things.  
He just likes his privacy™.  
Two hundred and fifty-six years aren’t that long in the eyes of an elf. Heck, Taako’s young. He’s in his prime. He’s anticipating another five or six hundred years of existence.  
He doesn’t really like thinking that far ahead.  
Live in the moment, you know?  
Thoughts of the future cross his mind every once and a while.  
Maybe marriage?  
Kravitz is the first boyfriend Taako’s had that caused him to think long-term. But he has a tendency to fall for shitty people, so maybe other people think like that more.  
Kids sound horrible. Like, kids genetically related to him. Taako does not want to procreate. There’s only enough room on Faerun for two people with Taako’s genetic material.  
Adoption, maybe?  
Nothings set in stone.  
But yeah, life’s more stable now, so his can think about that trash.  
Honestly? Marriage scares him. Taako’s not a big ‘permanency’ guy.  
Maybe Magnus will trick him into engagement a la Killian and Carey.  
It doesn’t really matter, does it?  
Life goes on.  
It’s just a piece of paper, really.  
Maybe life doesn’t go on.  
Maybe this is where it ends, something horrible and hungry popping in for dinner from the Labyrinth. Better to get it over with, eh?

He tries to eat.  
Lup says he probably has this anxiety disorder that makes him throw up when he’s anxious.  
Taako refuses to admit he’s got any sort of fucking disorder.  
Disorder implies sick  
Sick implies weak,  
Weak implies ‘need help’  
Taako doesn’t need help. No fucking way.

He reads his boring transmutation books. (He’s shooting for level twenty)

He sits down with a cup of tea in front of the labyrinth and stares into the inky blackness for what feels like an eternity.

The funny thing about Faerun?  
It’s home now.  
He’s an alien, on an alien world.  
He’ll never taste his aunt’s cooking again. He’ll never get to help Lup get her fifteen dollars back from Greg ‘fucking’ Grimaldis’s gnome boy.  
He’ll never feel the shine of his purple sky.  
He didn’t have a home during the century he spent with the starblaster crew, outrunning the Hunger.  
It’s nice to look out of the window of a place you pay too much rent for and know that you’re there to stay, that this place is permanent, not just an island in the black-opal coloured dark.  
His friends, his boyfriend, and his enemies.  
They’re all here, and they’re all permanent.  
The only real downside is the fucking labyrinth. He’s definitely not cool with that. 

 

He wakes up in Kravitz’s arms.  
He talks to Barry about nerd things.  
He jokes with Lup about cool things.  
He makes Angus’s life miserable.  
He drinks tea and coffee and fine wines, and eats when he can.  
He stops biting his nails (because it’s fucking nasty)  
Stops crying so much, and stops caring.  
You get used to the dark hallway looming over you, feeling like it’s monitoring your every breath. You get used to the fear in the back of your head, that it’s definitely not over, because he’s Taako from TV and he can’t get a fucking break.

Why can't he get a fucking break?


	5. Murder Me

Kravitz is the grim reaper (kind of)  
He’s used to seeing the whirling souls of everyone on the planet. He’s also used to delivering news of death.  
Death is just part of his life (death? Undeath?) At this point. It’s natural. It’s the destination all mortals crawl towards. It’s inevitable. Unstoppable.  
You think you can escape death?  
Think again, homie.

 

Kravitz is young.  
Subjectively, of course.  
Eight hundred years isn’t that long to someone with an eternity in front of them.  
It’s been long enough that the memories of how he died have long since disappeared.  
How did he die?  
Funny thing is, he doesn’t have the faintest of clues.  
Suicide? Murder? Fell down the stairs? Tuberculosis?  
After so long, you stop thinking of such things.  
You stop caring.  
You stop—as Taako would say—giving a fuck.  
Time  
And  
Time  
Again  
His queen won’t tell him how he died. Something about ‘security’ and ‘emotional state’  
Doesn’t sound so good, eh?  
Thing is, Kravitz doesn’t need to know.  
It’s just not important.  
No matter how he died, it’s far, far behind him now.  
Who cares about how he died?

After eight hundred years of existence, you stop caring about a lot of things.  
Kravitz doesn’t need to breathe, sleep, eat, or blink. His heart doesn’t need to beat, and his lungs don’t need to fill with oxygen.

Things he does need:  
Taako--breathes sun into his life, makes him feel, breath, and see color again.  
The Raven Queen—keeps him alive (dead? Undead?)  
Faerun & the Planar System—he’s tethered to this planar system. He wouldn’t be here without it, that’s for sure.

Beyond that?  
Not much else.  
He exists in a sort of stasis—neither dead nor alive.  
He barely existed at all until he met Taako.  
He was oh-so-cold, corpse-like in both physicality and disposition.  
Taako breathes warmth into his wintery existence.  
Taako is colorful—a beacon in his previously black-and-white world.

 

Kravitz wanders the apartment—unbound, unmaterialistic.  
He likes his soul form.  
It grants him a lot of freedom, you know?  
He floats up to the ceiling of –his, Taako’s, Barry’s, and Lup’s—bedroom, just existing.  
Taako’s below him, reading a complex textbook about transfiguration.  
Kravitz shifts out of the bedroom, through the hallway  
The labyrinth pulls at him.  
_Help us _, it says.__  
_Let us die, we want to die, please, finish us_  
_You can help us_  
_Kill us_  
_Kill us_  
_KILL US_ __  
They scream, plead, cry and bargain.  
Trapped souls—stuck in time, left to rot by circumstance or a cruel necromancer.  
Kravitz doesn’t have the  
Ahem  
“Authority”  
To get in there, and pull them out of their prison.  
The labyrinth is perplexing. He doesn’t have any wish to go in, mind you.  
But  
It’s not in his Handbook of Unusual Souls  & Circumstances. In fact, they aren’t even in his record.  
They don’t exist.  
It’s not right. How can they be there, calling for help, yet not exist?  
He has no idea.  
Kravitz floats back into the bedroom, and nestles on Taako’s shoulder.  
He needs to find something.  
It’s right there, in front of him, on the tip of his tongue.

He sees everyone’s souls, swirling, meandering, shining, living, and dying.  
Taako’s soul shines like the sun.  
Lup is fire sometimes, sometimes just black like every other lich/reaper.  
Most people are brown and grey most of the time, but everyone’s souls fluctuate. Everyone has their own unique colors.  
Kravitz considers himself fortunate to see them.  
Most people spent their hopelessly short lives shut away from that beauty. 

Taako doesn’t know how beautiful his soul is.  
How beautiful he is, how much he means to Kravitz.  
Taako’s the living sun.  
The color to Kravitz’s black and white.  
Taako’s so important. Not just to Kravitz, he’s important to all of Faerun.  
When Taako’s sad, his soul burns red—not like most people. When they’re down, their souls turn blue.  
Taako’s soul turns intense vermillion, burns like the blood that has spilt from him to many times in the past few years. 

It’s funny how to people hurt the most have the most beautiful souls.  
It’s cruel how the people who hurt the most have the most color, the rawest emotion. Angus McDonald doesn’t much enjoy his first week back at school.  
His mind keeps jumping back to Taako, to that maze in the apartment  
He has a full conspiracy theory board in his dorm, red strings and photographs and hectic arrangements and all.  
He’s got leads, but he needs more.  
He needs to go inside the maze.  
He makes up his mind,  
Rolls a stealth check,  
And sneaks out of school. 

Angus McDonald stands in front of the entrance to the labyrinth, EMF detector and notebook in hand.  
Taako, Kravitz, Barry, and Lup are all out of coffee.  
He’s alone.  
He takes a deep breath, braces himself,  
And steps in.  
It’s dark—unnaturally so.  
His thermometer reads a constant 32°  
He walks down the hallway.  
It’s about ten feet wide, and the walls are too tall for him to see the ceiling. There’s a T-shaped crossroads about seventy feet down.  
He takes a photograph every half minute or so.  
He turns right, and walks down the hallway. 

Time drags here.  
His compass swivels, his clock jumps forward then backwards, his EMF detector is reading really high levels of AC electromagnetism.  
He trails a piece of string behind him—breadcrumbs to the witch-house.  
He hears the wall groan.  
His theory is that the entrance to the labyrinth serves as some inter-dimensional or space-bending portal.  
He hugs himself, cold, alone, and tired.  
The hallways fluctuate in size; anywhere from two feet wide and tall, to so large he can barely see the ceiling or walls through the dark. 

He has no way of measuring how long he’s walked when his string breaks—his bread crumbs run out.  
He doesn’t know when he decides to drop the string, and keep walking.  
The labyrinth has a strange effect on one’s mind,  
Makes you a bit crazy.  
He’s not sure if he’s really even conscious,  
Is he awake?  
How can this be real?  
It’s not, he tells himself. It’s not real anymore.  
The darkness gives no answer.  
He wanders like that for a while.  
One by one, he discards his tools and devices.  
He doesn’t need them where he’s going.  
Where is he going?  
Where  
What  
Why  
Who  
How  
Where is he going?  
What is he doing?  
Why is he here?  
Who is he?  
How is this possible?  
He’s Angus McDonald  
Right?  
He can’t really remember.  
He thinks he does something involving investigation.  
Why is he here? Investigation?  
Who is Angus McDonald?  
He doesn’t know the name.  
Why would he?  
Who is he?  
Who is he?  
Who is he?  
He breaks into a run.  
Who is he?  
He doesn’t know who he is.  
He doesn’t know where he is.  
Why doesn’t he know?  
What is he missing?  
He hits a wall.  
He turns around, closing his eyes in the process.  
A pair of glasses go flying of his face.  
Which way did he come from?  
He puts his fingers against the wall, and runs again.  
The walls shake, tremors shifting the foundations of the place.  
He hears roaring, probably from the shifting walls.  
He also hears screams.  
Screams, cries, grunts, and growls.  
And perhaps worst of all, a second set of footfalls, different than his own.  
Clip-clop, clip-clop.  
Horses? Did he know horses?  
He runs faster still.  
He hits another wall.  
The thing (horse?) behind him catches up.  
Clawed paws push him up against the aforementioned walls. What feels like a snout sniffs his head, neck, and shoulders.  
The thing is a good deal taller than him.  
How tall is he?  
He feels a sense of disassociation, when the thing licks him, then sinks its teeth into his shoulder, dislocating his humorous, nearly rearing out his scapula.  
Who is he?  
He doesn’t know, so does it matter?  
He doesn’t move, doesn’t struggle as the monster tears out and crushes his clavicle.  
Why doesn’t he do anything?  
He feels numb as the monster rips the flesh from his arms in strips.  
He’s blank as the monster removes his arms from his body and eats them.  
He doesn’t know who he is.  
He doesn’t feel anything.  
He doesn’t care when the monster snaps his spinal cord, and the  
World  
Goes  
Dark. 

Worlds away, Kravitz, Lup, and Barry get a call from the Raven Queen.


	6. Tell Me

Time is funny, in the sense that it seems to move so much slower than it used to.  
Time is funny, but only in the sense that it hasn’t changed at all.  
It drags where it used to fly by, and it stops dead where it used to drag.  
Yes, time is funny, in the sense that it’s not really funny at all.  
Angus McDonald isn’t buried in a cemetery. He isn’t chucked over a cliff, he isn’t burnt into ash. Angus McDonald is funny in the sense that he doesn’t exist at all. They say your fingernails grow after you die. Angus McDonald doesn’t have any fingernails.  
Kravitz and Barry went into the labyrinth. They didn’t find much.  
Yes, a couple chunks and splatters of what used to be Angus McDonald, but other than that, he doesn’t exist at all.  
He had just gone to school, so all of his stuff was moved out of the apartment, making it feel like Angus McDonald doesn’t exist at all.  
Did he ever exist?  
Yes, but that’s not the pressing matter.  
Angus McDonald, the world’s greatest detective, is dead. Torn apart and consumed by something in that hell space.

 

Taako dislikes funerals, but the one he’s at right ow is the worst one he’s been to yet. It’s boring, sullen, and quiet.  
It’s not even the dark clothes, stuffed-up atmosphere, the faint smell of formaldehyde lurking in the corners of the morgue, or the late hour in which it is held. It’s kind of the fact that he’s at a funeral for his eleven-year-old friend, and kinda the fact that he’s surrounded by bureau members—Carey and Killian, Lucretia, Avi, Leon, (tres horny boys is avoiding Leon because he tried to take a swing at Taako when he made a snarky comment) Magnus, merle, Lup, Kravitz, and Barry. Magnus is pretty shaken up. Merle says that the kid’ll be doin’ fine in the astral plane. Taako feels like someone reached into his gut and yanked out his stomach.   
It’s fucking terrifying. Taako’s pretty done with being terrified.   
He thinks he spends too much time in such a state.  
It’s just not right. This shouldn’t be Angus McDonald’s funeral, it should be his.

Time is funny, but only in the sense that it isn’t.  
It should be. The world should be thrown off of its fucking hinges.  
Time is funny, in the sense that it never was.  
If the world cried every time a child died, it would all be ocean.  
Bad things happen, and you get used to it.  
When good things happen, you are surprised.  
Faerun might have improved post-Hunger, but it’s not perfect.  
Children die, people lie, and the world moves unsympathetically onwards.  
It shows no sign of stopping or ever slowing down and fucking chilling. That’s okay, though. If the world stopped to mourn every bad thing that happens, where would we be?

There’s a sort of severity surrounding the situation. The kind of dull quiet that falls over a crowd that collectively knows something horrible.  
They’re all in a morgue of sorts, for some reason. There’s no body to bury.

Time is funny in morgues. It seems to stop completely or to crawl onward so slowly that it appears to have stopped to a casual onlooker.

_Have you heard the darkest time of night?_   
_Who do you see, reaching through the shadows to get you?_   
_Do you hear the screams of the dying?_   
_Do you feel the pain of the past?_   
_Do you see the consequences go unspoken?_   
_Do you see the bloodied bodies of the dead?_

Time is funny, in the sense that it’s not there in the slightest.  
Time is funny, in the sense that it doesn’t exist.  
There’s no body to bury, so why are they in a morgue?  
Do you need a reason for everything?  
Everyone is there, coming to mourn the death of the little boy they all knew and loved. It’s painful, slow, and awkward, all things Taako is adverse to.  
He’s angry. Bitter. Why shouldn’t he be? His little boy just got fucking murdered.

The morgue is grey, bland, and boring. It’s the same kind of vibe you get from those old hospitals, the ones where you’re not entirely sure you’ll be coming out of the operating room alive. There are white roses, and the chairs are all uncomfortable and modern, the kind that makes your ass sore after about thirty seconds of sitting on them.  
Taako’s siting in a corner, huddled up and uncomfortable. He can see Kravitz, Lup, Barry, and Lucretia playing cards. What the fuck? Cards? At a fucking funeral?   
Whatever. Tradition be damned, cards sound kind of fun.  
He walks over to them, and sits down.   
Time is funny, in the sense that it flickers.  
He’s living in snapshots of his life.   
Click –he’s standing up from his chair.  
Click—he’s walking over to Barry, Lup, Kravitz, and Lucretia.  
Click –he’s saying hello to Lucretia. It’s been a long time since she erased his memories and left him to fend for himself.  
Click—he’s sitting down next to Kravitz, dealing himself cards for a game of Fantasy Rummy.

Time is funny, in the sense that it makes this feel like a bad dream.  
Like a nightmare.  
Everything feels like a nightmare these days.

 

They—Kravitz, Lup, Barry, and Taako—move out of their little orange-carpeted apartment. They’re done seeing Angus’s ghosts everywhere they turn. They’re done with the horrible darkness of the labyrinth. Come to think of it, they probably should have left the moment that motherfucker showed up.  
Thing is, it had a kind of gravitational pull to it. It was horrible, but it made you want to stay, to go inside. It pulled you inside, ate you up, and vomited up the consequences. It feed on the masochistic behavior of those surrounding it.  
Now that they’ve left the gravitational field of that place, it’s like fifty pounds of weight have been lifted from their shoulders. It’s not perfect, of course, the world rarely is, but it’s better.  
They move to a small town of Niton, on the southeastern tip of Faerun. It’s quiet, with a kind of Rockport-with-a-rustic-twist vibe. It’s not great, and the apartment they move into is smaller, with the kitchen and living room being mashed into one place, and the bedroom being about five feet by five feet. The people of Niton are strange.  
They smell of lies.  
Sounds weird, right?  
You can feel deceit and distrust running off of them like steam from a boiling kettle. Every time Taako, Lup, Barry, or Kravitz walk into a room, they grow quiet and angry. They glare at them, some of them yell at them, and someone graffitied a couple of slurs on the door to their apartment.  
It’s not ideal but the rent is cheap and there’s no labyrinth.  
There’s no dark, gaping maw waiting to swallow them up.  
It’s peaceful.  
It’s nice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey so I'm in the hospital with a collapsed lung and boy howdy was it hard to get this up with two nurses breathing down your neck and hospital bills preemptively staring at you.


	7. Mourn Me (to death)

“Do you hear that?”  
“What?”  
“The voices?”  
“No. Taako…?”  
“Yeah?”  
“Are you hearing voices?”  
“Kinda? Like, a bunch of whispery dudes all around. I’m not going insane, Krav.”  
“No.”

In fact, there are days when he wonders if he really is going insane.  
Does one know whether or not they’ve sunk into that dark place deemed ‘insanity’?  
Yes, he hears voices. Not the back-of-your-head kind of voices people talk about when they mention things like schizophrenia. The murmurs that float around him like mist on a windy day are not really  
(Voices.)  
They’re incomprehensible  
Not whispers, just screams heard from very, very far away.  
What’s the difference?  
It’s almost okay.  
It’s just that they don’t stop. They continue, unfaltering, merciless, persisting, and unstoppable.  
They get louder when he tries to sleep.  
It’s okay, though.  
There’s no real tangibility to your own thoughts, so why should he grant tangibility to voices that aren’t his own?

The new apartment is claustrophobic. Just small enough that Lup is constantly on edge, Barry bangs into every available surface daily, Taako’s voices take on an echoing effect, and Kravitz...well, he’s actually stable.

Magnus and Merle drop by for a ‘housewarming party’ that’s basically just an excuse to get their thoughts away from the cavernous entrance to the labyrinth.  
_11:15 AM, eighty days since the Incident_  
“Lup, get the door,”  
“You’re a fucking adult, Taako, get the door yourself.”  
“Fine.”

Taako gets the door.  
It’s Carey and Killian.  
“Hey, Taako,” Carey says, leaning her blue scaly head through the door to peer at the apartment. “Nice place you’ve got here. It’d be a shame if someone were to _ruin it_ ”  
“Fucking—leave him alone, Carey.”  
“Fine. Hey, Taako. Taako. Yes. Um…yeah. I don’t know why we’re here.”  
“We’re here to say hi, actually.” Killian says as Carey shoves herself past Taako and into the apartment.  
“Okay… um. Come in?” Taako says, walking back into the apartment with Killian following him.  
Lup walks into the kitchen/living room, tea and book in hand. “Oh, hey. Carey, Killian--fuck” She waves with her teacup, and a couple of drops of tea splatter on the floor.  
“Hi, Lup.”  
“Morning, Lup.”  
“What the fuck are you doing here at a time at which we should all be asleep?” Lup says, sitting on the tiny table in the corner of the room.  
“Just wanted to say hi.” Killian and Carey are now standing in the middle-ish of the room.  
Taako hoists himself up on the counter, and grabs a bag of un-popped popcorn. He hops back down on the ground and puts the bag in the microwave.  
Lup crosses her legs and sits like one of those monk people. “Barry and Kravitz are off doing death science, so you’re stuck with us.”  
“Huh.”  
“Well, this is fucking awkward,” Taako says from the counter that he just crawled onto.  
“Yeup.”  
_Time if funny, but only in the sense that it isn’t funny at all._  
“so…what’ve you been up to since tyin’ the ol’ knot?” Lup asks.  
Killian and Carey look at each other, considering their answer.  
“Breathing, eating, helping Lucretia with her fancy relief efforts for Neverwinter. You?” Killian says, moving to the couch-thing with Carey.  
Taako takes his newly-popped bag of popcorn from the microwave, pops it open, and eats it in between sentences. “Not much. Moving, laughing over and mourning the death of Angus McDonald.”  
“Yeah. It’s just horrible that he died.”  
“Yup,” Lup nods.

 

 

 _time is funny, in the sense that it shouldn’t be._  
Time goes on  
Just like it always has and possibly always will.  
Time goes on.  
Just like it never has and never will.  
Time is funny, but only in the sense that it feels funny.  
Time goes on,  
So they go on.  
They go on, and on, and on, just like time does.  
Taako still hears voices, Lup is still always tense, when Barry and Kravitz get back from doing death science Barry smashes into every imaginable thing in the apartment, and Kravitz helps them all cope with moving.  
Time continues to be normal.  
Time also continues to be funny.  
Taako continues to hear murmuring voices.  
Not murmuring, though.  
Screaming, but from very, very far away.  
How far away?  
Neverwinter far?  
Or farther?  
Life moves on.  
People move on.  
Things change.  
Times change.  
Don’t we all change?

 

 _12:00, in a place where time really is funny--_  
The monster waits.  
He’s patient  
But he’s hungry.  
How long has it been since he’s eaten?  
At least hundreds of years, his stomach tells him.  
There are no years here, his brain tells him.  
Time is an illusion down here.  
Or up here, direction is an illusion too.  
He’s hungry.  
How long has it been since he’s eaten?  
He can’t remember.  
He waits.  
He watches.  
He defies every law that Jeffandrew set down for this universe, but at this point that’s basically his job.  
Time is an illusion, direction is an illusion, but he is not.  
He is real. He knows this. He’s not sure exactly how he knows this, he just has a sense, a gut feeling that tells him he is real.  
He doesn’t know if anything around him is real, but that doesn’t matter.  
Why should it matter?  
Come to think of it, why should anything matter?

Time is funny down/up/left/right/back/forwards here.  
It’s funny in the sense that it’s supposed to be funny.  
It’s always been funny.  
It will always be funny.  
Why should you bother knowing anything more or less?  
You don’t really need to know everything here.  
You don’t really need to know anything here.  
He does like making it his business to know everything, though.  
If only to aid in his eventual escape.  
Maybe not escape, though.  
You don’t really ever escape this place.  
You leave, but a bit of it stays with you.  
He’s hungry.  
He’s starving.  
He wants to eat.  
So he sends out his Voices,  
He sends out his Prisoners,  
He hopes.  
He waits.  
He watches.  
He remembers.


	8. Glitch

Angus McDonald is not fond of the afterlife.  
It’s dull, boring, maddening, and everything in-between.  
Time is funny, but only in the sense that it drones on with no purpose.  
He floats in an ocean-like body of water, surrounded by millions of other souls. Algae-like clouds of them drift over the surface, blotting out almost all of the light, and the ones that aren’t near the surface bump around down here, a lot like atoms in a gaseous state.  
Vacant.  
They’re all pointless and vacant.  
What, dear audience, is the point?  
There is none, i.e. _pointless_  
Angus McDonald cannot see, hear, feel, taste, smell, breathe, or talk.  
What’s the use?  
He’s effectively alone in this vast ocean of souls.  
How bloody poetic.  
He’s a little bluish-silver dot. He can’t see this, necessarily, but he can _sense_ it.  
He’s a little bluish-silver dot among thousands of other little dots, all of which have their own individual colors, thoughts, and—not emotion.  
No, not emotion.  
Not here.  
Nothing to feel about.  
He can’t remember how he died, but he supposes that’s normal. After all, if you die in some horrible, traumatic way, wouldn’t you want to forget that?  
Time really is funny. It’s about 9.76•10-34ths of a second slower on the Astral plane than it is on the Material plane. (yes, he did read that in a book.)  
He has some level of mobility. He can propel himself around with a little tail of wispy light that swirls off of him.  
He floats up to the surface of the ocean. He has to push himself through cloud-like areas of other souls struggling to get a bit of light on them, but blocking it out for everybody else.  
They’re right, the sun does feel good, but it does seem a little bit unconscious and stupid.  
Everything seems a little bit unconscious and stupid if you look at it in the right light.  
Light is funny, because Angus McDonald has already forgotten it.  
Time is funny, because Angus McDonald will never really experience it again.  
He had woken up on a beach of black sand. There was a lady dressed a lot like Kravitz that picked him up and took him to the ocean.  
What was before that?  
Taako.  
Who?  
His mind wanders and doesn’t return.  
What’s the point?  
Let him forget.  
Souls do have a bad memory, he supposes.  
He sinks back down.  
Farther  
And farther  
Down.

 

 

Light years and universes away, the darkness of space unfurls and swallows up two solitary Voidfish.  
 ~~no forgetting now, eh?~~

 

The voices get louder.  
The days get shorter.  
The list of reasons to exist diminishes.  
Time keeps going.  
And going,  
And going.

Taako’s life levels out into an almost normal one.  
He wakes up in the morning a couple hours after Kravitz but before Lup and Barry, puts on socks, drinks a cup of coffee over a pretentious game of chess with Kravitz,   
Ignores the voices,  
Exists.  
He sleeps, he eats a full meal and a couple of snacks every day, he goes on Actual Real dates with Kravitz, and he hangs out with Lup and talks nerdy with Barry.  
He doesn’t like irregularities.  
Some people hang in the background. They hide for thir entire life, and in consequence, no one knows their name.  
Some people have their name screamed to the entire world by Voidfish.  
The voices start to get understandable.  
They say horrible things,  
Mostly about Fisher and Junior.  
Taako phones Magnus, because some things need to be said.  
Some things are so horrible that you have to say them.  
The voices whisper about many things.  
They whisper about Kravitz ( _he doesn’t love you_ ) they whisper about Lup ( _She’s tired of your bullshit_ ) they whisper about Glamour Springs ( _you killed them_ ) , they whisper about Angus McDonald ( _He ate him He’ll eat you and all your friends He’s hungry and He’ll eat us if He wants too so best He finds something to eat_ )but possibly worst of all, they whisper about Fisher and Junior. ( _we ate them they tasted so good like memories and pain we like pain we’ll eat your pain we’ll eat you too we ate them swallowed then up and ate them_ )  
Magnus comes over to yell-cry at Taako about lying and consequences, but he ends up sitting on their bed eating out of a tub of ice cream and watching Fantasy Rick and Morty with Kravitz, Taako, Lup, and Barry.  
Some things are so horrible that you never really stop crying.  
Some things are kind of pitiful. For instance; a grown fucking man sobbing over a tub of cookies n’ cream in a pile with four other people. Some things are too horrible to not elicit such a reaction.  
That night, Taako doesn’t sleep much. Yes, he _drifts_ , but he doesn’t sleep. He little-spoons with Kravitz and listens to Barry’s obnoxious snoring, but he doesn’t sleep.  
Some things are too horrible to sleep through.  
Some things are too horrible to forget.  
Some things are too horrible to ignore.  
Angus, and now Fisher and Junior.  
Who’s next?  
Who gets to feel the wrath of the labyrinth’s monster?  
At least, that’s what Taako assumes it is.   
Could be something else.  
Which might be worse.  
What’s worse, an enemy you know or an enemy you don’t know?  
Sometimes it’s both.  
Sometimes, there are things you just can’t beat, things you have no chance of fixing.  
Sometimes you just have to accept that it’s not getting better, you’re not getting anywhere, and you’re going to die.  
Sometimes, you face an enemy you’ve never seen or heard but you’ve known your whole life.  
Taako doesn’t want to fight that.  
Why would he?  
He probably can’t.  
What is it?  
It corrodes Jeffandrew’s system.  
Corrupts the natural order of the world.  
It infects his mind, habits, life.   
Infects.  
Corrupts.  
Like a virus.

 

 

vi·rus  
ˈvīrəs’  
Noun  
Noun: virus; plural noun: viruses; noun: computer virus; plural noun: computer viruses

1\. An infective agent that typically consists of a nucleic acid molecule in a protein coat, is too small to be seen by light microscopy, and is able to multiply only within the living cells of a host.

 

2\. An infection or disease caused by a virus.

 

3\. A harmful or corrupting influence.

 

4\. A piece of code that is capable of copying itself and typically has a detrimental effect, such as corrupting the system or destroying data.

 

_corrupt the system_  
He seethes in his prison (firewall?)  
He burns with darkness and hatred.  
He infects.  
He corrupts.  
 ~~let the world glitch~~  
He eats.  
Time is only funny because he makes it so.


	9. Undo/Redo

Picture a lake. It should be closed in, round-ish, and have at least two rivers or streams feeding it. That’s the universe. Every little dust particle or floating grain of sand represents a planet, a star, or a plane. Those rivers lead to other lakes, other separate universes that you can travel to if you only know how to follow the flow. Every once and a while a little whirlpool or eddy springs up—The Hunger and other irregularities— but it remains mostly stagnant. Sometimes the little quarks that make up the lake do something different. Maybe they stop a whirlpool from whirling or dare to create a disturbance of the perfectly smooth lake surface. Their actions create ripples in the water that stretch out into the rivers and the river’s tributaries.   
The lake stays calm and quiet for so, so long, until a storm comes and it _rains_. Every little drop of foreign water that hits the surface creates its own ripples. At first, there’s just a drizzle—a prelude, if you will, to the larger storm to come. The difference is so slight that the native water molecules don’t even notice it. Then, the rain picks up suddenly, as rain is want to do. The molecules don’t really understand the implications of such a thing, but they get the sense that something is very off. Now, let’s say the storm worsens and the winds pick up. There are waves now, sloshing the little water molecules around. Some waves go above the banks, stranding little water molecules on uncharted territory. Maybe this is the first time it’s rained, or maybe these little molecules simply forgot. Maybe they don’t live that long, and rain is so scarce that once the molecule’s ancestors experienced the rain, but it’s been so long that even their folk stories have forgotten the drop of a raindrop or the crash of a wave. Maybe it used to rain more, but things changed and it slowly came to a stop. What do these ignorant molecules do?  
I suppose some of them will give up and lose hope. They will allow themselves to float downstream to a whole other universe, lest they be pushed out of their lake and onto the shore. If they are unfortunate enough to reach the lakeshore, they might get swallowed up by the ever-thirsty sand or picked up by a little child’s shoe and carried far, far away.   
Some of the molecules will fight back. They will push against the current, trying to stay afloat and alive. Some of them will succeed, but the majority of them will perish in the same way as the ones who gave up.  
Some of them are smart. They will push and fight their way down to the very bottom of the lake, where the wind and the rain don’t reach. They will wait there until it subsides, and they will survive. Of course, a few of them will be swept off by the currents before they reach the bottom, following the same fate as the ones who fought back and the ones who gave up.  
Eventually, the storm will subside and the waves will die down. Silence will fall over this battered and fresh universe, and peace will ensue. This will only last for a little while, until the banks of the lake return to normal height and the birds sing their festive songs in the trees again. The molecular inhabitants of the lake will grow accustomed to the foreign rain, and time will pass until the same event happens again. This will repeat over and over, on an endless loop. It will persist and drone on. Perhaps the lake’s inhabitants will grow used to it. Perhaps the stories of the storms will pass down from generation to generation.  
You see, there is no real way for these little water molecules to control the fearsome waves that plague them.  
They’re insignificant.  
Most of them make it through, of course.  
Some of them don’t.  
Some of them do.  
Who knows?

Point is, they’re tiny and helpless against such a force.  
The universe is tiny and helpless against him.  
They should _fear_ him, love him, hate him.  
It’s not even a dominion thing.  
He just wants to eat.  
He just wants to leave.  
No, you don’t leave this place.  
Not here.  
So he waits  
He watches  
He sees.

 

 

Kravitz remembers--  
You lose something when you enter the Astral plane. You don’t know what, but you lose it and you never get it back. The price is higher for those odd people who are lucky enough to get a _job_ there. See it as a bit of a job interview.   
_”how much can you give up?”_  
 _”Everything.”_  
Kravitz knows what he lost.  
It’s hard to ignore a gap in one’s memory that spans all of one’s life.  
See, he’s not positive, but he thinks he gave away his entire life.  
No memories.  
No Emotion.  
Nothing.  
There’s nothing there.  
And then-- _pills, water, screaming, Nan didn’t have to see this_ \--It’s all there.  
 _He remembers_

 

Taako forgets.  
He forgets what he had for breakfast this morning.  
He forgets his keys.  
He forgets to drop by the grocery store because they’re all out of coffee.   
He forgets how to play chess.  
He forgets   
_he forgets_  
He doesn’t know why. He remembers these things soon after they happen in most cases, but there are vacant spots in his brain, little parking spaces for information that have been left empty and useless that weren’t there yesterday.

 

Lup trips.  
She stumbles down the stairs.  
She spills her tea on her good clothes.  
She burns a bit of her hair when she’s blow-drying it.  
She gets stuck on the elevator. (Fucking elevators, man)  
She cuts her tongue on the rim of a can of beans.  
She makes little mistakes.  
 _She trips._

 

Barry doesn’t trip.   
He falls.  
Down the stairs,  
Over his shoelaces,  
Through the door to the apartment,  
Into his tiny lab desk.  
Everywhere he goes, he falls.

 

Little mistakes are often overlooked. However, when they start happening so much everywhere, to everyone, they start drawing attention to themselves.


	10. Crushed By the Waves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, sorry for the late update and the shortness of the chapter. I've been going through a lot of medical stuff lately because my lungs are Weak™ and midterms are a thing that is happening, so time is not on my side.

Sometimes Lup’s head feels too small for her thoughts.

She’ll be going along, doing her normal thing, and she’ll begin to think about thinking.

Thinking is funny, in the sense that you should never, ever think about thinking. You’ll realize you’re trapped in your tiny, cramped skull--that your thoughts aren’t really there. They don’t come from anywhere, so do they even exist?

Thoughts press against the inside of her skull—they want to get out, to be vocalized, and to exist. They can’t exist, of course, they’re only thoughts floating around in her far-to-cramped skull.

Sometimes she lets herself fall too far into the dark carapace of her own brain. 

Sometimes she loses hold of whatever ledge she’s holding and falls down the spiral of panicked thoughts into the darkness below.

 

Sometimes she falls.  
Sometimes she gets up.  
Sometimes she doesn’t.

 

Bigger things go wrong.  
Worse mistakes are made.

 

 

 

_Far away, farther than you’d think_

Time is funny in the sense that it’s been fragmented into thousands of tiny pieces, like glass from a broken mirror.

Nothing lines up.

Wake up, go to sleep, die.

At the same time.

Nothing works.

The world stops running.

It doesn’t stop the darkness that crashes over it like a tsunami.

It gets crushed by the waves.

It disappears.

 

 

 

There’s only so much you can do to stop something.

If you see a tsunami headed your way, where do you run?

Who do you run to?

No matter what, you get crushed by the waves.

You run as far and as fast as you can, but they always catch up.

You can’t escape them.

So, you get crushed by the waves.

 

 

 

_Somewhere very far away, yet closer than you’d think_

It’s not a _crack_ in time. No one forced open. It’s just there.

It exists. Why challenge that?

When did it show up?

He doesn’t know.

Time has always been funny here.

It’s funny because it doesn’t matter.

It’s funny because that’s the only thing it knows how to be.

Anyway, that little tear in space and time?

That’s his ticket _out_

He’s ravenous.

He’s tired. 

He’s ready to leave.

He gathers his Voices, ties up the darkness, and slips into the universe.


	11. Fake Your Death

Kravitz stands on the Astral plane and looks up at the sky. Lately it’s been acting strange, if that makes sense. It’s not something he’s had to describe before.

The stars wobble and flicker. Every once and a while, a little rectangular section of black or white appears near the horizon, only to flicker out like an electric bulb gone dead. 

Back on the material plane, nothing’s all that peachy. Fires start at random. The ground quakes as it never has before. The ocean’s waves get bigger and bigger. If you look closely at the surf or at the flames you can see those little white and black rectangles that make themselves so apparent in the sky. The people of Faerun are scared out of their minds. They’ve started forming cults that spread word of the god’s judgement. (As if fear-mongering helps the situation).

 

Pieces start to fall apart.

 

Things that used to connect and make sense stop doing so.

 

Things fragment like glass on a mirror.

 

Little by little, the universe collapses into dust, taking everyone and everything with it.


	12. Shatter the Illusion and Wake up from the Dream

Taako wakes up in his own bed. In a little apartment in Neverwinter with garish orange carpets and lively talking coming from the kitchen. 

He pushes himself up and out of the bed and stumbles into the kitchen, noticeably shaking. Lup, Barry, Kravitz, and _Angus Mcfuckin’Donald_ are standing around the table in the back of the room talking about vampires or some shit.

~~Just a Nightmare, darling.~~

Sometimes your dreams get away from you.

Sometimes your imagination is too strong.

Sometimes you just need to forget.

 

Taako walks up to Angus and hugs him.

 

Sometimes you just have to ignore the Nightmares.

And let your love be natural.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it, folks!  
> thank you to whoever stayed with this tiny fic since the beginning. Sorry for the short couple of updates, but I just needed to finish this.

**Author's Note:**

> hit me up on [tumblr](https://starlight-firelight.tumblr.com/) if you want to talk or whatever


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